DESCRIPTION: This application is to support a mid-career development from statistics to biostatistics for Dawn Peters, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at Oregon State University. The sponsoring institution is the Center for Health Research (CHR), Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region in Portland, OR. Two senior investigators at CHR will mentor Dr. Peters: first, Dr. Mikel Aickin, who has substantial experience in both the application of biostatistics and the generation of new methods, and secondly, Dr. Alexander White, who has established a strong program of research embedded in the KP dental HMO. The first year of the award will focus on course work and directed study to complement Dr. Peter's strengths in abstract statistical methods. This will include biologically oriented topics not adequately covered in a statistics curriculum, such as logistic regression as used in epidemiology, and time-to-event analysis. During this year she will complete course work in epidemiology, and clinical trials methodology. In the second year, she will concentrate on biostatistical consultation within the dental research program. Biostatistical training will focus on methods of longitudinal data analysis, and causal modeling. She will complete course work on research ethics, and other topics to be determined (which may include courses to strengthen her background in areas such as physiology, immunology, or fundamentals of medicine). The third year will consist of an expansion of her consultation role, and mentored study of the research grant process, from inception through application development, submission, project startup, project completion and closeout. The setting for this project is ideal, in that KP has a successful HMO-style dental practice (one of the few in the country) with a strong electronic medical record component and substantial expertise in using this as a basis for observational studies. CHR is also the home of the Oregon Craniofacial Complementary and Alternative Medicine Center, an NCCAM-funded center supporting three Phase II clinical trials (two for temporomandibular joint disorder, one for periodontitis) and several developmental projects. In years 02 and 03 of the award, Dr. Peters will complete a research project using data collected from this latter project to address questions concerning participants' psychological traits as they relate to acceptance of alternative modes of therapy, and to differential success rates in different modalities.